San Jose home warehouse fire: Neighbor’s $5,000 backyard renovation to house daycare destroyed

Fourth, neighbors near the now-destroyed store said they were in remission, but were still traumatized.

Less than two weeks later, the video of the fire tearing through that Home Depot store is still equally horrifying. Behind that huge fire was a whole block of houses with neighbors who couldn’t believe the flames were burning.

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‘The fire got higher and higher and it started to look like a tsunami was coming towards us and that’s when I panicked,’ neighbor Cathy Gabbett said.

“The embers fell from the sky, the panic,” said neighbor Dee Brown. “It was pretty scary.”

Neighbor Sherrie Butts lives right across the street from the Home Depot, where she says smoke suddenly started seeping through her open window.

“I couldn’t see in front of me because of the thick smoke on the roof,” Butts said. “I couldn’t even find my dog.”

Butts runs a daycare out of her home. The Friday before the fire, she had just completed a $5,000 project to redo the backyard for her children.

The fire destroyed it.

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However, she finds things to be grateful for, her house still standing and the fact that the fire happened on a Saturday when her kindergarten students weren’t there.

“If it were any other day, I’d have eight kids here,” Butts said, “Yes, my community would come together, I’d have brought them to their comfort zone, but I didn’t. to deal with their parents trying to get here.”

The suspect, Dyllin Jaycruz Gogue, who was charged with aggravated arson and burglary faces between 14 years and life in prison.

The Santa Clara County District Attorney said Gogue set the fire as a distraction to steal tools from the store.

Gogue has also been charged with other burglaries since at least October last year.

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ABC7 was able to obtain surveillance video of him in a store in San Jose’s Eastridge Shopping Center, stealing a $270 wig.

Neighbors are still wondering about the fire, especially given the reports around that the store’s fire suppression system wasn’t working as it should.

So far officials have only said that it is under investigation.

Now, with a suspect in custody, there is a sense of relief.

Neighbor Dave Gabbett said: “He needed to be away for a long time, “He almost destroyed the neighborhood”.